Could such a thing be possible? Did he bear some aspect of an undergod inside him, a creature a thousandfold more foul than any daemon? And if truly a naethryn, could it be the very monster who murdered Meeryn?
Before he could ponder further, awareness of his surroundings finally struck through his shock. He was in a stone cell. Another dungeon. He lay on his back, naked except for a loincloth, strapped spread-eagle on a rack, lashed in rope that stank of shite. Black bile. The ropes had been blessed by bloodnullers, protecting the hemp from Graced enchantments.
He sensed a presence in the cell with him.
“He wakes,” a slithery voice said.
Tylar turned his head, making the room spin and his stomach churn queasily. A black-robed figure huddled near an open door, bent in shadow, face cowled. A hand, smeared in filth… black bile… pointed to him. The stench off the bloodnuller filled his nostrils, gagging him further.
With the nuller’s words, a figure stepped into the doorway, limned in torchlight. A tall man of wide girth and broad shoulders. He wore a beard, forked to the middle of his swollen belly. His clothing matched his hair, as black as a crow’s tail: boots, leggings, surcoat. Only his shirt seemed woven of silver thread, reflecting the torchlight, like the finest wrought chain mail.
Dark eyes stared down at Tylar’s sprawled form. Fire glowed in them, the shine of Grace, fiery Grace. Here stood one of the fire gods of Myrillia.
Tylar needed no introduction.
“Lord Balger…” he mumbled.
The god nodded ever so slightly, a strange courtesy considering their situation. “So you are the godslayer.” His voice was the grumble of a log crumbling in a stoked fire.
Tylar felt the room grow warmer as the god stepped closer. Grace, heated with the aspect of fire, seeped from the god’s pores.
“Not much to look at,” Balger said.
“I slew no gods,” Tylar choked past his sickened stomach.
“So you have claimed, but many disagree.” Balger reached a finger to one of his bound hands. The fingertip burned like a brand. Flesh blistered and smoked.
Tylar cried out.
Balger bent and sniffed the charred flesh. “I do smell Grace in you. Water, if I’m not mistaken.” He straightened and glanced to the bloodnuller. “It seems even the skagging touch of one of that ilk does not wipe away all your blessing. Now why is that?”
A voice answered from the doorway. “He carries the full Grace of a god in him, milord. Meeryn’s Grace.” Rogger leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, freshly bathed from the look of his damp hair. “It’s in all his humours. He walks like a god himself, only perhaps slightly weaker, a paler shadow, yet still not without potency. You saw how his wounds healed with a mere slather of firebalm.”
Balger frowned through his beard. “You’ve brought me quite the trophy from your pilgrimage.”
Rogger shrugged. “I knew it would take such compensation to buy back my freedom.”
Tylar stared at the thief, aghast. Had he been betrayed? Surely this was some ruse on Rogger’s part.
Balger folded his arms across his ample chest, fingers entwined on his belly. “Well done indeed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen such strangeness with my own eyes. A human godling. When you sent that message to expect you in the Middens, I thought it a foolish trick.”
“No trick. I’ve learned better than that.” Rogger rubbed one of the branded tattoos from his interrupted pilgrimage. “It took a bit of time and pain. The overheated tubes of the Fin stung like a salted whip. I needed most of a morning, while the others slept, to tattoo that new message into my flesh.”
Rogger pulled up a sleeve of his starched shirt, fingering a crude, blackened and blistered scrawl on the underside of his arm. “Firebalm is not healing my wounds as quickly as it does your prisoner.” He eyed Tylar as if he were some dried-and-pinned specimen in an alchemist’s lab and shook his sleeve back over his betrayal.
Despite the dawning horror, Tylar had to acknowledge the thief’s cleverness. Of course Balger would know any words burned upon Rogger’s flesh. The god had cursed him with the pilgrimage, requiring the sigils of each realm’s house to be branded into his flesh. A pilgrim’s progress was overseen by the very god who placed the curse, to ensure the pilgrim continued his journey. Rogger had used that blessed link to carve a message upon his own flesh, to deliver word to Balger, knowing the god would sense every brand pressed into him.
Tylar stared at Rogger. Had this been his plan all along? To buy his freedom? Tylar stared hard at the thief. “What have you done with Delia?”
“Safe,” Rogger answered. “It was only a sandbag that tipped the crossbow’s arrow. Meant to stun. As I warned in my message. The same as struck you in the back of the head. No broken bones.” He eyed the bindings. “We can’t have you loosing that daemon of yours.”
Tylar’s head ached. “Where is she? What have you done-?”
“She’s being well treated by the bevy of ladies in Lord Balger’s private wenchworks. Scrubbed, combed, and sweetened. It’s not every night the Hand of one god will lose her maidenhead to another god. She’ll be entertaining Lord Balger this very evening.”
“You bastard…” He struggled in his bonds, but only managed to choke himself against a leather strap securing his neck. He could barely move a finger.
During this discussion, Balger slowly circled Tylar, studying him, rubbing his upper lip with a finger. “No one knows he is here?” the god asked.
“No, milord.”
“He would make for an excellent source of Grace, an ever-flowing font of riches. A golden cow to be milked daily.”
“Milord, what of the call from Tashijan? Is he not to be delivered to them? The reward for his capture-both in gold and goodwill-would surely be substantial.”
A wave dismissed his words. “Such payment would come but once. A living godling would be a treasure without end.”
“But there is also the danger. A chance mishandling, a lowered guard, and it would take but the snap of a finger or toe to unleash the dred ghawl inside him.”
Balger’s eyes both narrowed and brightened. “I would see this daemon, fathom its aspect. Surely there is profit to be found in such a creature.”
“Be wary. I believe, as does the handmaiden who accompanied us, that this dred ghawl somehow maintains this font of Grace. For its own preservation in a man’s form. A cocoon of Grace inside a cage of bone.”
Through his anger, words echoed in Tylar’s head: I am naethryn.
Balger leaned closer. “I’ll have my alchemists study his body from crown to toe, from mouth to arse.” The god reached across Tylar’s bare chest. He splayed his hand above the blackened print atop Tylar’s heart, hovering, matching his fingers to Meeryn’s.
Tylar smelled the fire flaming from the god’s pores.
It was said that a god’s aspect reflected his or her character. Gods of loam were as patient as a budding seed, as solid as rock and hard-packed soil, while gods of the air were aloof and farseeing, ethereal in mind and grace. Gods of water, like Meeryn and Fyla, varied the most, fickle in temperament and spirits, as changeable as water itself: solid ice, flowing water, misty vapor. Then there were the fire gods, who were as quick to anger as a lick of flame, as volatile as a woodland blaze, as passionate as the heated embrace of lovers. They were the best and the worst of all the gods.
And Lord Balger smoldered among the worst of them.
He lowered his hand to Tylar’s chest. Tylar remembered the burning touch of the god’s finger a moment ago, the sear of flesh. The smoke of Tylar’s charred skin still tinged the air.
Balger pressed his hand down atop Meeryn’s palm print.
Tylar winced but found no burn.
Instead, it was Balger who gasped. The god’s fingers vanished into the black print as if Tylar’s flesh were mere shadow. He probed farther, wrist deep, into Tylar’s chest.
Rogger moved closer. The thief, like Tylar, had examined Meeryn’s palm print. The print had been no more than a tattoo on his flesh.
